Thoughts about words, words about thoughts.

Pizza or Sausages on your Hair, Madam?

A few days ago, I took the almost unheard-of step of allowing a hairdresser access to my apology for a hairstyle. She asked me when I’d last had it done – I thought it could have been August but wasn’t too sure if it was so recently or not. Ho hum. I’ve always been what you could call ‘low-maintenance’ but even I had realised I did need something doing about the jungle growing from my scalp.

After a rather fruitless discussion about where my parting is [‘I haven’t a clue.’], what I would like doing to my hair [‘I haven’t a clue.’] and other similar questions I couldn’t answer, I was asked the killer one…..’Do you use any product on it?’

I stuttered, pondered and then asked ‘What do you mean by product?’ To me, a ‘product’ is something that has been produced and, therefore, covers an almost infinite amount of possibilities. I was told that, to a hairdresser, it meant stuff like mousse, styling gels, hairspray and other such-like items. After recovering from my semi-hysterical laughter I did venture that I thought I might have a can of hairspray ‘somewhere’. When my poor hairdresser had done her best to educate me on the virtues of ‘product’ [and also done a rather splendid job of taming my locks] I decided to see what the definition of the word is.

A search for images produced the one above, which does, admittedly include some hairstyling goods. However there are also sausages, pizza, breakfast cereals, fish portions, ice cream and mouthwash in the line-up. One of the definitions I came across was:

A substance produced during a natural, chemical, or manufacturing process: ‘waste products’

Hmmm, so I was quite correct in asking for a clearer definition of what was meant by ‘product’ in the context of my hair…because ‘No’ I do not want fish portions, mouthwash or chemical waste rubbing in, thank you very much!